The Best NAS Hard Drives You Can Buy [Here Are 3 Options]

What Is NAS

NAS refers to Network Attached Storage, a data storage server directly connected to a computer network and provide a large amount of data to a group of clients.

Simply put, as a small cloud-based hard disk server, NAS storage system provides you with more convenient resources to read and share, and more secure data backup solutions.

If several people want to access data from the same hard disk, a removable hard disk needs to be copied one by one, which takes a lot of time and is inconvenient. And many users feel worried about the security if their confidential data is stored on public clouds like iCloud. In this situation, NAS storage is the best choice. That is to say, you can build a private cloud storage inyour home.

In addition, there is less chance to lose data if you use NAS, because NAS system can support RAID backup. Even if a hard disk in NAS is broken, the data will not be lost. As long as you insert a new hard disk, the NAS system will copy the data back to the hard disk, so that the original data can be restored.

Read more: How to Choose Right Storage Space for Your Server or NAS?

How to Choose NAS hard drives?

When you decide to buy a NAS drive, you need to know information about speed, vibration protection and warranty. Let’s see one by one.

Speed

The speed of any hard drive is measured in RPM, which determines the data transfer rate.

For an HDD in NAS, it is important to have a higher revolution speed because the drives need to stay fast enough, especially when in RAID.

5400 RPM is good in smaller configurations.But if you’re using larger RAID configurations for your NAS, you should consider 7200 RPM hard drives instead.

Go to see Windows 10 Storage Spaces vs. RAID: Differences and Data Protection.

Vibration Protection

Hard drives working at a high speed often results in vibration. Vibration in turn can then cause very slight misalignment, scratches, and other types of physical damage on the disks,which creates errors and bad sectors.

What’s more, NAS hard drives are designed to run continuouslyfor very long duration (they may be on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week), which leads to higher risk of errors and bad sectors.

That’s why companies like Western Digital and Seagateadd special vibration protection techniques to NAS hard drives. The vibration protection not only prolongs the life of the HDD, but also greatly reduces the heat produced.

Warranty

A long warranty ensures that NAS hard drives can be replaced if it fails within the warranty period.

Usually, the warranty offered is anywhere between three to five years. I recommend going for five years if you are using multiple HDDs in RAID configuration and have a lot of users connected to the NAS network.

3 Reliable NAS Hard Drives

Option 1: Seagate IronWolf

• Great Storage Options: The Seagate IronWolf is available in capacities between 1TB to 14TB, inclusive. The cache of this drive is 256MB, and the speed is 7,200 RPM for most higher capacity models (for 6TB or higher drives).
• Vibration protection: Only drives larger than 4TB are designed with vibration protection.
• Reliability: Seagate has its own technology, AgileArray, to offer enhanced performance and reliability over regular hard drives.
• Warranty: Three years.
• Prices: The price starts at around $50 and can go all the way up to $500, depending on the capacity of the drive.

Option 2: WD Red

• Storage capacities: It’s capacity ranges from 1TB to 10 TB.
• Speed: It sacrifices speed (runs at 5400 RPM) for extreme reliability.
• Vibration protection: Every WD Red has vibration protection system.
• Warranty: Three years.

Option 3: WD Red Pro

Based on WD Red, WD Red Pro adds a few advantages:

• Warranty: It is upgraded to five year warranty period.
• Technology support: 3D Active Plus technology is put in this drive to greatly improve its health.
• Cache: It offers cache of 256MB.